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Political Interests Arouse Raging Debate on Census

Two years from the start of the 2000 Census, it is shaping up as the most contentious in 80 years, generating a firestorm of debate and strategizing in Congress and litigation aimed at blocking the Census Bureau from changing the way it does business.

Over the last year, the dispute over the bureau's plans to alter its method of counting the population delayed passage of a disaster relief bill for victims of flooding in the Midwest, prompted Congress and the Clinton Administration to set up an outside board to monitor the bureau and generated two lawsuits, including one by Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Congress has ordered the traditionally apolitical Census Bureau to draft two plans for conducting the census -- one the old way and one using the proposed new method, statistical sampling, which is at the center of the dispute.

''This is quite a battle,'' said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, and one of the few members of his party to support the proposed changes.

The fight is the most heated since the 1920 census, when rural lawmakers, aghast that the headcount documented for the first time that more people lived in cities than in rural areas, refused to use the results to reapportion the House of Representatives.

At issue this time is the Census Bureau's plan to forgo its traditional, and some experts say failing, method of trying to physically count every person in the country. Instead, the bureau proposes to try to count all the people in 90 percent of the households in each census tract, which is a geographical area consisting of about 1,700 dwellings.

Using those figures, bureau statisticians would try to determine the number of people in the tract who had not been physically counted. The bureau would then check for accuracy by conducting a survey of 750,000 households nationwide and making any needed adjustments to the final total.

The statistical sampling plan was prompted by the 1990 census, which cost $2.6 billion, a 400 percent increase over the previous headcount, in 1980, even after adjusting for inflation. The 1990 effort missed 10 million people and double-counted 6 million, according to Census Bureau studies and a study by the National Research Council, an arm of National Academy of Sciences.

Most Republicans vigorously oppose the plan for sampling, arguing that it violates the Constitution, Article I, which calls for an ''actual enumeration'' every 10 years, and that it is much too complex for the Census Bureau to perform successfully.

But the proposal is staunchly supported by many Democrats who assert that it is the only way to get an accurate tally of minorities -- particularly inner-city blacks and Hispanic migrant workers, who are traditionally the hardest to count.

Beneath the assertions about constitutionality and fairness and the discussion over statistical methods lies a raw political fight that is based on race and redistricting. And the outcome, some experts say, could be critical to which party controls the House and state legislatures in the beginning of the next century.

Both sides say the Census Bureau's sampling method would probably help Democrats and harm Republicans, but no one is quite sure.

Sampling may increase the count of minorities, primarily blacks who are the Democrats' most loyal voters, in some Congressional and state legislative districts. Since these districts tend to be safe ones for Democrats, boundaries could be redrawn by state legislatures to shift some of the ''surplus'' black voters into neighboring white districts, making these districts more competitive for the Democrats.

''The Republicans are very much aware of this,'' said one Democratic redistricting expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''That's why they're fighting it. They're scared they're going to lose the House. Frankly, I don't see that it would make a 15- to 20-seat difference. It might make a 6-, 8- or 10-seat difference. But given the situation we have right now, that's huge.''

Indeed, the Republicans are very much aware. Some even argue strongly that the reasons the party has a slim majority in the House have less to do with ideology and more with the fact that the 1990 census was conducted in the traditional way.

In his new book ''Lessons Learned the Hard Way''(HarperCollins), Mr. Gingrich described last year's fight over the issue, in which the Republicans tried to force the Census Bureau to scuttle its plan to use sampling, as being ''of great importance to the welfare of our party.'' In a meeting with Republican House members then, he called sampling a ''dagger pointed at the heart'' of Republican control of the chamber.

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Last year, Jim Nicholson, national chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent a memorandum to his state chairmen, urging them to join in the fight against statistical sampling, saying the new method could jeopardize 24 House seats, 113 State Senate seats and 297 State House seats.

''At stake is our G.O.P. majority in the House of Representatives as well as partisan control of state legislatures nationwide,'' Mr. Nichols wrote.

Most experts contend that Mr. Nicholson and others exaggerate the political consequences of sampling. Still, Amos R. McMullian, president of Flowers Industries and a contributor to Republican candidates, sent out a fund-raising letter in February that used those figures and asked for contributions to help a conservative legal group, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, challenge the constitutionality of sampling.

This lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, is similar to the one filed by Mr. Gingrich in Federal District Court in Washington. Both lawsuits assert that sampling violates the Constitution's requirement that the Government conduct an ''actual enumeration'' of the population every 10 years.

Democrats say that using sampling is the right thing to do, but they are also aware of the political advantage the new method could bring them. In 1990, the bureau used a modified version of sampling, conducting a nationwide survey to determine who was missed. The bureau then proposed adjusting the final numbers based on that survey.

But the Bush Administration refused to adjust the census, prompting a lawsuit by several cities, including New York, in an effort to force the Commerce Department -- which oversees the Census Bureau -- to do so. The lawsuit failed. Some members of the Clinton Administration have vowed that the census setbacks the Democrats suffered in 1990 would not be repeated.

The raging political wars have baffled and demoralized the Census Bureau itself. Situated in nearby Suitland, Md., and with only 2 political appointees among more than 10,000 employees, the bureau is one of the most apolitical of all Federal agencies.

Census officials say they came up with the plan for statistical sampling at the behest of lawmakers in both parties to reduce costs and increase accuracy. Now they find themselves in a political maelstrom.

''We have gone about doing our work with the assumption that we should be looking at solutions that produce the best results,'' said James F. Holmes, the bureau's Acting Director. ''The political side is something that we have not given a lot of thought to.''

Despite the political ramifications of the census fight, House Democrats have complained that the Clinton Administration has not shown sufficient resolve in the battle.

Two months after Martha Farnsworth Riche resigned as the bureau Director while intense political wrangling was taking place, the Administration has only recently begun interviewing people to replace her. The White House has also just announced its four choices for the eight-member outside monitoring board, which was agreed upon in November. The Republicans announced their four choices in January.

The Democratic appointees, announced this week, are Everett C. Erhlich, former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs; Tony Coehlo, a former House whip; Gilbert Casellas, former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission, and Lorraine Green, former Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management.

And, though President Clinton promised House Democrats in November that he would make the census fight a major priority, he has not uttered a word in public on the subject since.

''There has not been the total commitment on the Administration's part to this issue,'' said Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey.

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A version of this article appears in print on April 12, 1998, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: Political Interests Arouse Raging Debate on Census. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe